Ah, a personality
disorder test, giving particularly uninsightful and near-verbatim
regurgitation of the answers you give. These things are only really
intriguing when they throw questions at odd enough angles to uncover
the unconsidered (although such tend to get rejected as 'bad tests', I
suppose, if we don't feel like accepting them), or give insight we don't expect them to have gleaned
(the Luscher
Colour Test is quite unnerving). But I suppose it's fun and
informative to sew little personality-problem badges to your sleeve.
[via Tyrethali]

"You see, at the end of the day, the situation we have inherited
is one that the Sea Devils put in place."

John Humphrys
interviews a Dalek on the Today programme,
apropos the online broadcast of some rejected radio pilot or other,
as well as an enthusiastic Sylvester McCoy and a swathingly skeptical Michael
Hanlan ("bringing back Dr Who now would be an abomination"; "using the
Internet to look at anything interesting is very difficult").

11.07.01

Michael Ancram
is knocked out of the Tory leadership race, with both Clarke and
Duncan-Smith saying there's still "all to play for" in the next round of
voting. Are leadership elections always this absurdly gameshowy, or are
the Tories making a surreal effort to capture public interest? (And tabloid,
I suppose, with the frightening amount of over-coverage that Big Brother
seems to get.)

Forget bacteria - it was the
Clangers that really defeated the Martians.
Track 5 on the second CD of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds,
4:08 minutes in, as the Martians lay dead. The government will try to deny it, but it's there.

10.07.01

Odd news at Cook'd and Bomb'd
on the "postponed" Brass Eye, of the episode's main theme actually
being media hysteria, and particularly Internet-led hysteria. That
the whole imbroglio of it being cancelled, and of rumours flitting around
online forums, was carefully engineered by Mr Morris as an example of what
the programme is about. Intriguing. And, if true, it seems a rather prescient
foreshadow of the Bulger-killer photo-on-the-Internet nonsense. Curiosity.

09.07.01

I feel dimly cheated, but glad that it wasn't just another meaningless
bank advert; the "Do It With Joy" advertising campaign -
something I've become slightly but sufficiently aware of - was actually
a Guardian prank, a typically nonsensical series of adverts (run only
in the Grauniad itself, it turns out) for a product or service which
could have been absolutely anything. Today's G2 took a look at how it
all came together, and what the public's general perception of it
was.

K-PAX II: On a Beam of Light is out on the 23rd
of July, a sequel to the brilliant and memorable K-PAX.
So says a spokesperson for the publisher,
who emailed me about it because I'd once written a favourable Amazon
review. Tightly-targetted advertising. I approve.

And a film version is apparently in the works after all, with
the mighty Kevin Spacey in the Prot role (rather than, as
previous rumours had it, Will Smith). Jeff Bridges seems to be down
as the psychiatrist, too. Very promising.